that was then

WHY! WHY! WHY!
6/12/2006
When I discovered what I did almost one year ago now, porn on his computer, I felt as though my world was coming to an end, crashing down around my ears, my little bubble of sweet illusion torn and tattered, burst just like that in a brief moment. I felt my heart clench up and be torn from my chest in one hardened lump and dashed to the ground.

It's not that I felt completely at ease with you. I've never felt completely at ease with anyone, not even myself. All my life I've been filled with anxiety, and now it's not only about me, it's you, us, life, love. I did feel secure in my attractiveness with you and how you felt about me, but in that moment, I felt that I knew nothing, not about you, me, or us.

I also knew in that moment that there was a very good reason why this had happened and that I had some deeply serious lessons to learn, belief systems to reconsider. Regardless, it's hard not to feel that it's my fault that you look, that I'm not good enough, not pretty enough, not young enough, not sexy enough, not anything enough.

A speech carefully composed, one of my first heart to hearts - oh so hard for me then

10/20/2006
I don't feel there's anything wrong with our relationship other than we both have trouble opening up and talking about our feelings and deeper issues. I haven't known how before. I've never done it before. It's new to me, but it feels like keeping secrets when I keep things to myself for whatever reason, and this feels awful.

I'm sensitive in that I feel it when you are troubled. I sometimes ask if there's anything you would like to say or tell me and when you say no even though I feel otherwise, it feels like secrets too, and that also feels awful. I'm also sensitive in that I often take it personally and feel it's me, and again that feels awful.

I've been learning ways to open up a little when things are on my mind, share deeper parts of me and when I do, it feels so good. I feel so much closer to you.

I want to tell you why I went into therapy over a year ago and didn't tell you until now. I was afraid and embarrassed that you would see what a mess I felt I was, but I also couldn't tell you because it was because of you and what I had discovered about you, when I found the porn.

I felt my world was coming to pieces around me. I felt I was going to lose myself, and I felt I was going to lose you too. I felt betrayed. I felt like I had been cheated on.

I'm grateful that this happened though because it made me realize how guarded I still was, how shut down, so much I still had to release, so much I still had to give to me and to you.

This past year I've been working mostly on releasing and opening up, and I have in all ways. Even though we have always had a good sex life, great you said, I know now that there is more, that I can open up, expand even more sexually, and this has been the easiest and the funnest. I've also opened up more energetically and spiritually. My heart has been slower, the words too. In so many ways I feel so much better.

I've also been working so hard to release the issue with porn. I've been working on it and working on it, trying to come to a place of acceptance, embrace it even, but I'm not there yet. I may never get there. I don't know why it triggers me so horribly, but it still does. It still hurts.

I feel miserable when my thoughts go to imagining you looking at pictures on the internet or at magazines. I've wanted to ask you not to look at that stuff or tell me you have already stopped. I don't want to have suspicions anymore. I don't even want to think about it anymore.

I want to know in my heart that you're not doing it, but herein lies my dilemma. I don't want to impose on your freedom. Asking you this feels to me like asking you to give away a little piece of your freedom, and I don't know if I have the right to ask that. I don't know if it's okay, but I'm suffering, so I'm asking.

I will continue to work on this, but if I could know that you're not deliberately seeking it out, I feel I would have some peace with this piece. I realize that there's no way for me to know what you do when you're alone, but if you told me in all sincerity that you wouldn't do it, I would believe you. I trust you.